Fathers
by Simon920
Summary: The two fathers--Craig and Jack--reflect on their sons.


Title: Fathers

Author: Simon

Pairing: Craig/Jack

Rating: PG-13

Summary: the fathers think about their sons

Warnings: none

Disclaimers: These guys aren't mine, they don't belong to me, worst luck, so don't bother me.

Archive: Yes

Feedback: Hell, yes. 

Fathers

I knew that there was something different about him. I've known it for a while now, at least a couple of years but I didn't say anything and I sure as Hell didn't want anyone to say anything about it to me.

I guess that's why I was so pissed when Jen brought it up last night.

She had been hinting and dancing around it for a while now, at least a couple of months, but I just didn't listen. I'd tell her that I was busy or that we could talk another time, but I knew what she wanted to tell me.

He's gay.

I didn't let her think that I believed her, of course. If I had she would have wanted to know why I'd never mentioned it to her, but the truth is that I've probably known—or thought that I knew—longer than she has. I've just kept my mouth shut about it.

My son is a fag.

And you know what the real pisser is? For about a year there I was afraid that he'd get that friend of his, Daphne, pregnant. I mean, they're always together and they both have hormones and, well—you see what I mean. Teenagers. I really thought that I'd have to give him the talk about safe sex and how there was more to sex than just getting your rocks off and all of that.

I guess I'll have to edit that one, you think?

Now I'll be worrying about AIDS and some old perv grabbing his…God! It makes my skin crawl, all of it.

I went up to his room after Jen told me—she was in the shower by then, trying to get away from me, no doubt.

I'd been in there more times than I can count but this time I really looked around. I'd never really looked before, you know? I'd never bothered to see what the general clutter contained. It was just a general mess of teenaged boy—clothes on the floor, schoolbooks on the desk, the usual mess that you'd expect.

That was when I noticed that all the pictures on the walls were of men, boys…athletes, rock stars, models…beautiful men. The drawings in his sketchbook, after you got past the usual drawings of flowers and branches and Daphne and a few of his teachers were all of the athletes. You know the ones I mean, the kids who were built, the football players, the swimmers almost naked and then I got to the part of the pad where there were nudes—every single one male and graphic.

The page that really stopped me was the one full of doodles, all of them of a name…the 'Brian' that Jen had mentioned…in old English, in cursive, in shadow lettering and a dozen other fonts I don't know the names of.

No, it's not a boy's name. Jen had told me that this Brian is a grown man. I try to picture a man who would have sex with a child, because that's what Justin is, whatever his age or what the law says.

I keep picturing a middle-aged man in a cheap suit, balding with a fringe of hair and a potbelly. A cheap salesman type, the kind who drives an old clunker of a car and smells like sweat if you get too close. I keep picturing a slimy predator, the kind you picture hanging around outside kid's playgrounds with a black trench coat and offering God knows what.

I can't imagine Justin going with someone like that, though, so my fantasy falls apart.

Next my mind latches onto the idea of what we used to call a girly man, in makeup and heels and a dress…like one of those cheesy Judy Garland or Cher impersonators. I start to picture them kissing and I just shut my eyes to block it out. He wouldn't do that, I mean, he couldn't, not with someone like—that.

Justin wouldn't ever give himself to what I've conjured up, so I'm trying to imagine and can't.

A man's man. Justin.

I started to leaf through one of his school notebooks, it was just sitting on his bed—the spiral bound kind with the lined pages when a snapshot fell out onto the floor by my feet.

Of course.

It was Justin with the man who could only be Brian.

His Brian.

Fuck.

This would be more Justin's taste than the slime I've just turned into any parents waking nightmare. This one would be more dangerous.

This man is young, maybe thirty or so, handsome—a beautiful man in fact—and he and Justin have their arms around one another, smiling, unconcerned and laughing at something.

Fuck. They look happy, they look so Goddamned fucking happy and that shit bastard is doing things to my son, to my little boy, and I can picture them together kissing holding each other and then I can see them naked and he starts to turn Justin over so that he can shove his…

Fuck.

He's beautiful and tall and he looks like he probably works out, there's no softness about him. He'd have to be smart for Justin to be attracted to him and probably a success at whatever it is he does—other than screwing kids. He doesn't look like a fag. I mean, he doesn't seem to flame like some of them do. He's dressed in normal clothes and he just looks like a normal guy, someone who you might see at the office or walking down the street or who you might have over for dinner with his pretty wife.

He doesn't look like the fagging whore who's fucked my son and can still smile in a picture.

I just kept looking at the photo. It's the kind of thing that you'd see in someone's family album and just think that it was a couple of friends having a good time together. You really could think that and it wouldn't be hard to make yourself believe that that's all they were to one another. You could show this picture to your grandmother and not worry that there was anything off about it. You really could.

Did Justin steal his underwear or were they a present?

And what the Hell am I supposed to do now? That's what I'm having trouble with. If he had gotten some girl pregnant, I'd have known what the options would be, but how the fuck do you deal with this?

Forbid him to see 'Brian' again? He'd laugh in my face. Send him away to boarding school? Justin will graduate in a matter of months, what good would that do? Talk to the minister? See the guidance counselor at his school? Sit him down for a heart to heart?

It's all lame and he'd see through it. Justin is smart, always has been too smart for his own good. If this is what he's decided on—shit, did he decide on this?—fucking nothing I can say will mean anything to him.

And Jen, what do I do about her?

She seems to almost be ready to accept it and to accept him. If she turns that corner I'll lose them both.

I don't want to lose them. I think that I'm going to and I don't know what to do.

So Sonnyboy is a fucking fairy.

OK, I can't say that I'm really all that surprised. He never did seem to care all that much about the girls when he was still a kid living at the house, not that he ever told me squat about anything.

Closed mouth little fucker.

I kept waiting for him to come to me, ask me about the ladies, but he never did. I just figured that all those nights he snuck out or didn't come home he was out getting his jollies, but I never asked him.

He'd have just told me to mind my own fucking business and then I'd have had to pop him one.

Little fucker.

Little fucking faggot.

I guess that he was out getting his jollies after all.

I thought that friend of his, that Michael kid was pretty much of a pansy and I wondered why Brian hung around him, but it's not like I ever lost any sleep about it. Well, I know the answer to that one, now, don't I?

Shit. I would love someone to explain to me why Jack Kinney's little boy likes to stick his dick up some guy's ass. I'll never, as long as I fucking live understand that one.

He was the one who always acted so much better than the rest of us, he was the one who got the grades and the trophies and the letters and the scholarships and all that shit.

As if any of that mattered.

Big fucking college man.

Shit. I never went and I did just fine working for forty Goddamned years as an electrician—I was the best fucking electrician you ever saw. I could wire anything, any goddamned thing you want I could do it.

What does he do? Fucking ads. He writes the crappy ads that I gotta sit through when all I want to do is watch a Goddamned game.

Spends his time in some fancy schmancy office at some fucking desk in one of his Goddamned fancy suits, wearing a silk tie and writes fucking ads for ladies things.

And you want to know the real pisser about that? He makes more frigging money in a month than I make in a year.

Fucking fairy.

Mister high and mighty, acting like it's no big fucking deal when he hands over that Goddamned envelope every month but I know that he lords it over me. He never says anything, not him, but I know he thinks that his old man is a fucking loser.

Well, his old man knows what to do with the ladies, which is a hell of a lot more than he can say.

Christ, taking it up the ass and letting some fag stick his willie in his mouth. There's a picture for you, Sonnyboy.

My son, the one who was supposed to live on after I'm gone, do the family proud.

Fucking fairy.

And what do you think the Warden would say if she knew her boy liked taking it up the ass? She'd never get up off her knees and that's the truth—fuck, maybe that's where he learned it.

Sonnyboy's a fucking fairy.

Jesus. Like I need this.

3/19/03

6


End file.
